Bill Brandt
[Photographer, b. 1904, Hamburg, Germany, d. 1983, London.]

 Photographers should follow their own judgment, and not the fads and dictates of others. Photography is still a very new medium and everything is allowed and everything should be tried and dared... Photography has no rules. It is not a sport. It is the result which counts, no matter how it was achieved. 

Andreas Feininger
[Photographer, b. 1906, Paris, France, d. 1999, New York.]

 Photographers — idiots, of which there are so many — say, “Oh, if only I had a Nikon or a Leica, I could make great photographs.” That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard in my life. It’s nothing but a matter of seeing, and thinking, and interest. 

Harry Callahan
[Photographer, b. 1912, Detroit, Michigan, d. 1999, Atlanta, Georgia.]

 I have ideas. I always go out with an idea, but it isn’t a very big deal, you know. It isn’t as if I’m going to save the world. Maybe I want to get down low and tilt the front lens, maybe it’s that much. 

A.D. Coleman
[Critic and writer, b. 1943, New York, lives in New York.]

 Any photographer worth his/her salt—that is, any photographer of professional caliber, in control of the craft, regardless of imagistic bent—can make virtually anything “look good.” Which means, of course, that she or he can make virtually anything “look bad”—or look just about any way at all. After all, that is the real work of photography: making things look, deciding how a thing is to appear in the image. 

Lars Tunbjörk
[Photographer, b. 1956, Borås, Sweden, d. 2015, Stockholm.]

 I try to take photos like an alien, or a small child. 

Gueorgui Pinkhassov
[Photographer, b. 1952, Moscow, lives in Paris.]

 Don’t be afraid to take bad pictures, because good pictures are the mistakes of bad pictures. 

W. Eugene Smith
[Photographer, b. 1918, Wichita, Kansas, d. 1978, Tucson, Arizona.]

 I didn’t write the rules. Why would I follow them? 

Pieter Hugo
[Photographer, b. 1976, Johannesburg, South Africa, lives in Cape Town.]

 The picture takes 1/125th of a second. The photographer is always trying to compensate for that brevity, to extend the process. 
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